Emily Chan
Carl described the second day of going out on the river with Stahle in 2011 as the best day of her career.
When they reached the cypress stand and disembarked from the boat, they walked through the forest, counting the trees. She recalled that Stahle’s excitement was contagious as he urged her to count as well.
“Every 10 minutes, we’d stop and count, and he’d go, ‘Those are millennial-age trees! This is the oldest cypress stand in the world!'” Carl recounted. “I’m getting goosebumps this whole day. It was amazing.”
Moore’s first time seeing the old cypress trees had been decades ago, and she had had the same reaction of wonderment as Stahle did.
A friend who worked for the Forest Service had driven her as close to the river as possible in an old truck.
Before exiting the vehicle, she took notice of the ancient cypress. The amazing specimen towered over them, inducing a stunned silence from the spectators.
If there’s ever a time to be rendered speechless, it’s when you’re in the presence of a tree that has been alive long before the advent of Christianity and the English language, surviving over 26 centuries of human history.
